Cari Cari’s Alexander Köck - GEAR MASTERS Ep. 566

Hello, my name is Alex. I'm the guitar player of Carry Carry. We're a band based in Vienna, Austria. It's our first time in the States. We just came off a west coast run, then we flew to South By to do a few shows. And now an eastern leg of our tour here in Chicago. Haven't had deep dish pizza yet, but I'm excited for it. We're going to Detroit and Boston, Toronto and New York before heading back to Europe and starting in Berlin where we'll be on tour for another two months. So I'm very excited for that. Usually I've got a bigger rig, so this is the small rig here, because we're flying. My main guitars are all here. That's a Hofner Verithin, a German brand. You probably know Hofner for the violin basses that Paul McCartney uses. I won this guitar when I was 18 or 19 at a band contest that Hofner sponsored. Ever since I've been a player and collector. Usually I only play Hofner. This is made in China or something, so it's like 300 euros, which is like $300 or $250. They usually make those with humbuckers. This one is weirdly with single coils. Actually I'm a Hofner endorser now, just because I wanted to get another of those guitars. They're called Verithin, so they're very fragile. I'm afraid I'm going to break one when flying. I contacted them to say, do you have more of those, because I can't find them anywhere. I just want to buy a second one as a spare. They were like, no, we don't do Verithin with single coils. They're like a family-run company, they're not very big. Apparently one guy just decided to do a single coil version. That's the one they gave away. Meanwhile I found a second one on Craigslist, and I love it. It's a very good guitar, very defining for my sound. It has this weird switcher here, this guitar. You can turn on all of them at the same time and switch. I don't really use this one, because I actually think that those are single coil bass pickups. I don't think that this really sounds like a bridge pickup. It's still a little muffled, so I really don't use it. I usually just use the neck pickup and the middle one, because it's a little more twangy. If it needs to be a little more twangy, a little more like a neck bridge pickup, I use that one. I usually have it on 100% volume up. Unfortunately, those kind of volume tone plate things just always fall off. That's why it looks like it does. It's a little road-worn already. With strings, I'm very straightforward. I use D'Addario 10 gauge strings. I used to have flatwounds on the other guitar for a while, but I stopped doing it, because it's fine as it is. I'm not very specific about it. In standard tuning, I usually play 60% of my set in drop D. If it has to go lower, I have the Digitech drop. I can turn it down another full tone or octave if I want. This is the cheap one. Because I couldn't find another one like it, I bought this one off of Craigslist as well. It's the German-made version, the very thin special. It has those diamond mini pickups. They're kind of like the ones you'd have in a Gibson Firebird. Overall, this is probably in the range of a Telecaster. This kind of sounds like a Jazzmaster a little bit. Because they're hollow body and a little thicker, I feel like they've got more body and sound a little special. I'm trying to find my own sound. I always felt like if I play a Strat or a Tele, it feels like everything has been set. There's nothing to add. The other thing that's different here is that it has a kill switch, which I really like. It's nice to go to switch positions. It has an overall volume knob that I use a lot. Sometimes if I do a lot of looping and if I solo over it or have another layer of tone, I just roll it down. I always do it with my little finger while playing, which is nice to have it up here. So I can just play and do this all the time. Then I have a bit of a tick that I always have to check if all of them are on 10. I think it would be quite good to lock them or get rid of them. But this one is very helpful. A lot of people use a volume pedal to turn off the guitar. It's kind of like my thing that I just go down and up in between songs. It has regular 10-gauge strings on it. It used to have flat mounts, but not anymore. For some songs it was cool, but overall it was lacking bite and aggressiveness. I think I'm a little embarrassed. We played a very sweaty gig, which just came from Texas. All of them are very sweaty. I like to move a lot and I get sweaty, so I'm sorry for that. Usually I should have cleaned up before. But you've got to bear with me. Then I've got this guitar here that I just own for one hour. I just went into a music store. It doesn't have anything on it. But there are little holes in there, so maybe it used to be something. I was looking to find a Harmony guitar, because they're very rare to find in Europe. But if they are, they're quite expensive. So I thought I'd buy a Harmony Rocket or something, a semi-acoustic thing. I tried a few and they all didn't click with me. This very cheap guitar that I just bought for $300 immediately clicked. Immediately things come out. It surprisingly plays very well. It's set up very well. It plays like an expensive guitar, honestly. It's very cheaply made. There's no fancy binding or anything. It's very rough. It looks like a cheap store guitar, but it sounds great. I guess sometimes they probably pick the great wood for this one. You've just got to be lucky. When they say, well, I want a pre-CBS guitar, because that's where... It's not like CBS bought Fender and then from one day to the next all the guitars were shipped. I just think you've got to be more lucky. I think I got lucky today. Alright, so next up are pedals. I think it looks more... Again, this is my fly rig, so it's a little condensed. Usually I also have a small stone phaser that I really like. This is a Colorsound Wah fuzz, which is very cool. I haven't played Wah for a long time. I kind of thought that the Wah is a crybaby. Then I tried it, I didn't like it at all. Then I bought this just because it looks cool. It's from the 70s. It's very cool. I do it for that kind of like Neue Krautrock, King Gizzard kind of... It's perfect for that. Tuner, the Digitech Drop. I just use it for one song that I just want to get the guitar one full step deeper. I didn't want to bring an extra guitar that's always tuned that way, so it works very well. That's just a spring reverb pedal by JHS Pedals. Honestly, it's mainly because my old amp always had problems with the spring reverb. It would drop out sometimes during the set. Then I had to have the backup and I use it if I need some extra reverb. Especially when I'm using amps on the road that I'm not 100% familiar with the reverb. Because I'm very specific on reverbs. This is a Boss Delay. I just use it for one song. I do a written picking thing. I think people know it, it's nothing special. Colorsound Powerboost. I think that's the magic sauce of my rig. I think it's not the original one. The original ones go for insane prices. It runs on battery. Also, another tick of mine, that's why I just plugged it out. Because it runs on battery, the battery empties when you keep it plugged in. So I was like, oh, I gotta plug it out. So sorry for that. It's just a booster. It just kind of fattens up the signal. I think it's like using a LA-2A compressor or something. So it just gives that body that I want. Especially because we don't have a bass player on the regular. So sometimes my guitar has to fill the frequency space of the bass. So this helps a lot with it. It's always on. This is actually supposed to be a remake of that pedal. Because I wanted to get rid of it. Because it's so big. It uses battery and it's very inconvenient. So I just looked for different options to get rid of that. So I bought this one. The Special Cranker by Earthquaker Devices. Which is supposed to be the same thing. But it's not. It's definitely not. But it's very cool. It sounds much cleaner and colder in a way. If that makes sense. So I kind of use it as my next level boost. So if I wanted to get very fuzzy and distorted, I just put that on as well. Which is very cool. Nanopog is an octaver. Again, for the songs where I play bass. Actually, I bought a double-headed guitar. To switch between bass and guitar within songs. But it was just much easier to use the octaver pedal. So I use that. It's set up so that the sub-octave is at 100%. The high octave is off. One song I've got it on. The other one I've got it off. So I just switch. Tidy Widy Compressor. It's just a compressor. Because I usually get very excited while playing. So we might soundcheck and the level is perfect. Because I put the amp to 2. So it's exactly where it breaks. And then I play during the show. And I get too excited and it's just fuzzy. So I've got the compressor to keep me contained. This one is another. It's called the Clover by JHS Pedals. I think it's modeled after some preamp unit that The Edge of U2 uses. I think the way that I treat distortion or overdrive. But none of those are overdrive pedals. Because it never worked for me. So I think they're just ways to push the valve a little more. To get that sound that I'm looking for. And usually those two are always on. Just as the basic sound. And this one I just put in if it needs to go hard. I had a Hofner delay here. Which is like $30. And it's just a very cheap slapback sounding delay. Kind of like a cheap version of an MXR carbon copy. And I tried a few ones. And they were all too good sounding. And the Hofner delay that I had before. I had two and they both broke. And I needed to get a replacement. So I ordered all those pedals. And they all sounded too good. And then I ordered the Behring as well. Which is literally a plastic case. It's plastic housing. I think it's like $30 or something. And it's exactly what I want. It's just this cheap sounding slapback. It's kind of like acting like an overdrive as well. So when I need to go harder I just activate it. And it's kind of like an overdrive slash delay slapback thing. Very cool. Very cheap, very cool. I'm going to buy like five. Because I'm expecting that there's going to be a lot of pedal breakage. Because they're made of plastic and look super cheap. And I usually don't support Behringer. But this one is very good. Then here we've got the Boss Arts RC500 I think. Or 50 something. It's just a looper pedal. I used to have a very tiny one that was just like this size. But with our new setup I sometimes need to do two loops at once. And it's very handy that it has a stop button. Because usually it was just a one button. And it was very hard to find the right moment to click on the pedal. Because maybe two seconds later it would stop the loop and delete the loop. So it's just more handy. But I use probably 1% of all the functions of the pedal. And it's new as well. Another thing is that we connect it to MIDI. Steph uses the same pedal for her bass. Because it's just a three piece and we have some more advanced arrangements. We sometimes have to cheat to make it work. So sometimes I'd be looping here and soloing over it. And then Steph loops her bass as well. And Ivo plays something on drums. And it's very hard to keep two loops perfectly in sync for a minute. I mean it's practically impossible. We do it if it's just one loop and then the rest can adjust to it. So we found a way to MIDI sync them. So for those songs Ivo triggers a MIDI click on his SPS-X that our loops are synced to. So we can loop the bass, loop the guitar and do something over it. Which is very handy. That's why we got the new loopers. Here's my amp that I actually just got today. And to be perfectly honest I'm not 100% happy. I usually play a Fender Supersonic. I just use the clean channel. On the West Coast run I had a Silverface Deluxe Reverb. Which is now what I know I need. I thought I want a Blackface but I want a Silverface. And usually I use the Vintage channel. Here we've got a Blackface Deluxe Reverb which is fine. But I think there's something about it that I... It doesn't sound as warm. It sounds a little more like a Twin Reverb or something. A little more like Mercury-ish. Usually I have it on 2. Here I have to go to 3. More bass than treble. Reverb is usually at 4. And I don't use the vibrato. It's very basic. It's like all the things are happening in the hands here. But it's very based on dynamic playing. I'm just at breaking point. And when I play harder then it goes into more distorted kind of thing. I guess that's why I don't like overdrive pedals. Because they feel very static sometimes. Or distortion pedals. And here it can go from very clean things. That I also do a little bit with the volume on the guitar. To a very distorted sound. And I'll get it from Fender instruments. So thank you for making great amps. To be very specific now. I also have a pick preference. Which is the Dunlop Max Grip 73s. I used to have other ones. The Tortex ones. Because they're pink. They look very cool. But they don't have that grip thing on it. And that's really important to me. Because I sweat a lot. So it's kind of like soft picks. That's it. They're great. They're cheap. That's why I use them. Actually I play with my hands a lot. With my fingers. So it's just like half of the songs I use the pick. But it's great. I keep it here in my pick holder. So I can switch during songs very quickly. Then I've got a capo as well. Nothing special about it. Just a capo. Yeah, so thanks for following our rig rundown. If you want to see more or hear more. Check out our new album One More Trip Around the Sun. It just came out. Go to our website. Subscribe to our newsletter. Because we're trying to get off Instagram and all those things as much as we can. And yeah. We appreciate you looking and watching. And we see you on the road.